I am going to try to explain the adoption process as best I can. It is the one thing we get the most questions about right now and every time we think we understand it we learn something new. So, this list is just my best understanding of the process right now.
Apply to Agency: Done, September 23, 2007
Apply to Home Study Agency: Done, October 3, 2007
Home Study Process, involves the gathering of paperwork, writing biographies, two in home visits, two days of classes, and then your social worker writes up the home study, which is then reviewed by our agency, and then the social worker sends to the courts (I am told the last one in Pinal County she did took a month, boo), if the courts certify us we can move on, completed everything on our end as of November 30, 2007, our social worker is writing the report now and it will get it to our agency at the beginning of next week
Citizen and Immigration Services approval to bring the adopted child(ren) home, our certified home study will then be sent to CIS and processed, sorry I don’t have an estimated time on that one
Certification, all of our notarized documents now have to be certified by the Secretary of State in the state where the documents were originated, basically they are stating that we used a real notary
Bundling, our agency double checks our dossier (dos-ee-ey: a collection or file of documents on the same subject, esp. a complete file containing detailed information about a person or topic), it then travels to Washington, D.C.
Authenticated at the U.S. Department of State
Second Authentication at the Ethiopian Embassy, both authentications take about 1-2 weeks, then it is returned to our agency’s main office
Dossier Sent to Ethiopia, in Ethiopia it is quickly translated into Amharic and the new translated copy is authenticated
Sometime after that we will receive our referral, we will get basic info on our children at this time, this step has been taking about 1-3 months but could increase due to more agencies being approved to work in Ethiopia
Once we accept the referral our dossier is then presented to the officials at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, and to the court, after this we can expect to travel in approximately 2-3 months
Hopefully ya’ll find that helpful and not too boring! Please post any questions in the comment section or if you know something I don’t know inform me.